Pointing to the Brain
First Place
by Christopher Hannan
Metarie LA
A child knows picking is original sin.
The hand of God from Eden’s finger flicked
the first who reached up in the tree to pick
from underneath His nose the fruit within.
Their eyes were glazed as they fingered the apple,
deep like breath at the pluck and release;
dilated eyes of the child whose pointer seeks
to reach that luring spot above his knuckle.
They picked the fruit of god to taste the flesh
forbidden in the limbs whose leaves would screen
our inability to sate the need
to reach for things our bodies can’t resist
You laugh at the driver whose sinuses grow
like apples at red lights. They make him reach
to pick at what he wasn’t made to reap:
that goddamned spot that all our picking knows.
The biblical knowledge of good and evil
sowed itself like stinkweed in our brains
so every time the apples itch again
we reach and point to pick at them a little.
And no disgusted stares of passersby,
no angry mother’s “get that out your nose!”;
the word of God Himself cannot deny
the old temptation we cannot outgrow.